Chapter 20
Wood splintered beneath Damien’s boot as the first door gave way.
The sun had only just crested the shadow wall, and though its light was sharp and bright; most of the district was still asleep.
People were torn from their beds. Children wailed as soldiers flooded the rooms, wrenching cupboards open, ripping doors from their hinges, shattering plates simply because they could.
Ellaryn had been part of raids like this before—at the beginning of the King’s reign, when terror was still being taught—and although this was a smaller scale than she was used to, the procedure was all too familiar.
The King had wanted her to witness true power at the age of nine, even though the heavy boots made her flinch.
The dwellers always reacted the same way.
Silence, suffocating and frightened. And yet she could see it in their eyes: the words they wanted to scream, the questions they were too afraid to ask.
Some were braver. Or more desperate.
They fought back—spitting at the soldiers, hurling curses, lunging with kitchen knives as though defiance itself might be enough to save them. Those ones never lasted long. They ended up crumpled on the floor, hands pressed to bleeding wounds, or dragged away in cuffs for an audience with the King.
Prison, the dungeon, or death. Sometimes all three.
Ellaryn shut out the sound of children crying as she moved through the rooms, opening doors, crouching to peer beneath beds, yanking wardrobes aside. She made a show of it. She had to. Even though she’d already guided Damien and his men past the alleyway, away from Xander, without comment.
Even though she knew he wasn’t here.
Still, she wondered if he was close by—watching the destruction unfold from somewhere unseen. If he was hiding beneath their notice, standing in plain sight.
When he had vanished that day, he had been truly invisible. Absorbed into the world like a brushstroke swallowed by a painting.
She had never seen anyone do that before.
“What about you, huh?” Damien’s dark eyes shifted from the man he had just interrogated to his wife. “Notice anyone different? Hear anything?”
He leaned in close, and she trembled, clutching her two small children whose arms wrapped tightly around her waist and thighs.
They were both girls, which was unfortunate in their world.
They were unlikely to make anything of themselves in Cinders.
Housemaids maybe? Cooks? Cleaners? Or dressmakers, if they were lucky.
“No, sir,” she said, lips quivering as tears streaked down her ash-stained face.
Damien crouched, bringing his gaze level with the children.
“Don’t touch them!” the father screamed, struggling against the guards holding him fast.
“Relax,” Damien said, a twisted grin on his lips. “I’m not going to hurt them. I just want to talk.”
Ellaryn watched the mother’s grip tighten around her children. Her chest ached. This cruelty, this relish in power—it was unbearable. Damien had always craved control. As a boy, he hoarded toys, sometimes stealing hers when she wasn’t looking.
She leaned against the small kitchen table, eyes catching the bright green of the mother’s gaze before the woman quickly looked away. She reminded Ellaryn painfully of her own mother—dark hair, green eyes. The same frightened look on her face as that day. She had to look away.
“Has mummy or daddy brought anyone home lately? Anyone unusual?” Damien asked. The children shook their heads, pressing closer to their mother. They shared her features, but their skin carried a few darker tones—inherited from their father, by the look of it.
“Or perhaps they’ve spoken about a revolution?” he prodded again. Terrified little faces shook in unison.
Ellaryn stepped forward. It was time to end this.
“There’s nothing here. Come on now,” she said, glancing at the cracked plaster clock on the wall. “We don’t have all day.”
Damien’s gaze lingered on her, displeasure flickering across his features, but he reluctantly followed when the rest of his men began filing out.
“Don’t tell me you’re getting soft, Ruin?” he sneered as he fell into step beside her.
“Not soft. Just impatient,” Ellaryn shot back, casting him a brief glance over her shoulder.
Embers drifted lazily through the air as they stepped back into the street, glowing orange against the smoke-darkened sky.
She was almost certain she heard Damien mutter something beneath his breath, but she had no interest in asking what.
An hour had passed, and word of the raids had spread through Cinders as fast as the wildfires.
Dwellers were already boarding up their homes, hammering planks across doors and windows as though there were something inside worth hiding.
Fires roared brighter around the families cast out onto the streets, their belongings reduced to heaps of ash while the Knights showed no mercy in tearing through what little they had left.
Once, houses in Cinala had been built from wood and oak.
That was before the King’s rule, before the ever-burning fires made such materials little more than kindling.
Now, anything that could withstand the flames was considered a necessity rather than a luxury—brick, concrete, fire-resistant paint.
Even then, no building remained untouched.
Walls bore blackened scorch marks, windows were cracked or shattered, and the streets carried the permanent stench of smoke.
And when the guards weren’t terrorising the streets, the looters emerged.
They picked through what the Knights had left behind, prying open drawers, tearing apart floorboards and rummaging through possessions that had been carefully hidden away. Anything of value was dragged into the open, dragged from the places where Dwellers had once believed it would remain safe.
Nothing stayed buried in Cinders for long.
“You’ve got to see this!” One of the Knights beckoned their attention from another room. Ellaryn’s heart kicked up as her eyes drifted to Damien, who raised his eyebrows in response.
“What are we going to find?” He mused to the young boy on his knees, Knights on either side of him. He mustn’t have been any older than twenty.
He shook his head. “Nothing. I swear.”
“You wanna hope.” He replied. “Hold him tighter,” Damien instructed as he walked into the other room. “Don’t need another runner.”
Ellaryn followed him through to see a knight who had kicked up the rug and was now staring into a hatch on the floor.
“What is it?” Damien asked, peering over.
“A door of some sort, to a tunnel.”
Tunnel… fuck.
Ellaryn’s mind raced. She dissected the Knight’s words as they echoed in her head.
Tunnel.
That was the word he had used. Not basement. Not shelter.
Tunnel.
And tunnels always led somewhere.
Deadman’s Alley was only a few streets away. She knew Xander was close, which meant this hatch could lead straight to him.
Her pulse quickened.
“A tunnel, I see,” Damien said, deliberately loud enough for the dweller to hear. “Adrian, Fredryx—bring him in.”
The Knights obeyed, hauling the boy into the room, his boots scraping uselessly against the wooden floorboards.
“What’s this?” Damien asked, pointing towards the hatch.
The boy said nothing, his breath catching on his chapped lips.
“Let’s try this again.”
Damien approached with deliberate purpose. He placed a firm hand against the back of the boy’s neck and forced him towards the hatch. With a sudden shove, he sent him sprawling to the floor, then steered his head towards the opening until he was staring into the darkness below.
“Where does it lead?”
“I-I don’t know,” the boy stammered, tears gathering in his eyes as Damien’s grip tightened.
“Are you sure about that?” Damien asked.
Ellaryn could see from the way the boy winced that Damien was gripping him hard. “Because you know what happens when you lie to a Knight.”
“I don’t know. I-I swear. I’ve never been down there. I only found out about it a few years ago, after my parents caught the Blight.” The words tumbled from him in a desperate rush.
“Hmm.” Damien hummed, unconvinced, before turning his attention to Ellaryn.
“What do you think, Ruin? Do you think he’s telling the truth?”
The boy’s expression grew even more terrified as Ruin approached; Ellaryn tucked away for the foreseeable future.
She summoned the easy smirk that always made the dwellers tremble and let it settle across her lips. Soot streaked the boy’s cheeks, and tear tracks cut through the grime like dirt roads. Her presence made him visibly stiffen—a reaction she knew all too well.
“It would serve him best to,” she said, stepping closer, though her narrowed eyes remained fixed on Damien. “Because I’m getting so tired of cleaning my blade.”
A small smile tugged at her lips as she crouched to the boy’s level.
He had steadied himself enough by now that only a single tear remained, crawling slowly down his cheek. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Blood has a habit of staining the metal,” she murmured. “Though, once washed away, the steel always seems to shine brighter.”
The boy gulped.
“They lead nowhere,” he blurted, his voice defeated. “I lied.”
The words were barely a breath.
“I have been down there.”
Damien’s expression soured into a grimace.
“I thought I could escape,” the boy continued. “I thought it would lead beyond the Shadow Wall.”
Another tear slipped down his cheek.
“But it doesn’t.” He said, his voice cracking. “The wall is down there too.”
His head bowed as the tears finally began to fall freely.
“There’s no escape.”
Ellaryn swallowed.
For once, she had nothing to say.
Beside her, Damien’s eyes lingered on the boy for a long, brutal second—one that probably felt like minutes to him.
Then his boot connected with the boy’s back.
The boy slammed into the floorboards with a cry. Ellaryn hid her wince at the sudden violence but forced herself to remain composed, her expression carefully blank.
“You should count yourself lucky that’s all you got for lying to a Knight,” Damien bellowed.